“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “It’s just… we need this money. I have debts.”
I nodded once, gathered my purse and the small suitcase they’d packed, and stepped out onto the gravel shoulder. The spring air was cool, scented with fresh earth and the promise of rain later. I stood there clutching my bag as Brandon drove away without looking back, Melissa’s pale face visible through the rear window until they crested a hill and disappeared.
No phone. No money. Or so they thought. Just my name, and what they didn’t know I still owned.
And that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. I was free. Free from pretending these people deserved my love simply because I had given them life. Free from the weight of maternal obligation to children who saw me as nothing but an obstacle.
I started walking, not toward the gas station Brandon had mentioned, but toward a future they couldn’t imagine. In my purse was my passport, my medication, and a deed. The original deed to twenty acres of land in my maiden name, purchased before I married Nicholas, before Canton Family Orchards expanded. The most profitable twenty acres, as it happened, which included the water rights any developer would need.
